Singapore food tech VC raises $25m for debut fund

LPs include family offices and high net worth individuals, including Anil Thadani, chairman of Symphony Asia Holdings, and Tan Kim Seng, chairman of Kim Seng Holdings. The target corpus has not been confirmed.

The Good Protein fund will invest globally across various stages, targeting trends such as growing acceptance of vegetarian alternatives among meat eaters, the use of biotechnology to create new foods, and rising protein shortages related to population growth and growing affluence.

Good Startup said it planned to back 32 companies with the capital raised to date. There have been six investments so far, including Eat Just, a US vegan egg substitute brand now expanding into Asia; Singapore’s TurtleTree Labs, a company that creates milk from cells with no animal needed; and Hong Kong’s Avant Meats, which produces fish meat and whole marine proteins for the food, supplements, and beauty industries.

The GP will offer operational support around intellectual property protection, hiring, organization design, and scaling to meet growing market demand. Good Startup estimates that alternative proteins will grow from 1% of the $1 trillion animal agriculture market to up to 60% by 2050. It also projects that the animal agriculture market will double in size by 2050.

“The future of the world’s food ecosystem rests on these next-generation companies. In order for them to meet their sustainable food production goals, they require investors and partners that can guide them throughout their journey,” Jayesh Parekh, a managing partner at Good Startup, said in a statement.

“Being a cross-border fund that invests in alternative protein companies globally, we are especially excited about alternative protein ecosystem’s potential in rapidly emerging markets like Southeast Asia where we currently have a rich pipeline of deals that we are actively working on and expect to make announcements soon.”

Asia has emerged as a core market in the global food tech movement. In Singapore, previous fundraising activity includes VisVires New Protein launching its second fund and Big Idea Ventures launching its debut vehicle. They are targeting $150 million and $50 million, respectively. Last year, China’s Bits x Bites reached a first close of $30 million on its second fund. In April, Hong Kong’s Lever VC achieved a fourth close of $46 million on its debut fund.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Consumer
• Technology
• Cleantech
• Fundraising
• Venture
• Singapore
• Food
• Agriculture